Skip to content

Iowa Caucuses

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Who cares?

Filed in Republicans | | Comments (0)

Reflections on 2012

Monday, January 2, 2012

 
After much (well, some) reflection I’ve decided not to write a list of predictions this year, at least not like I did last year. I could easily just re-print my predictions from last year, except the one about the iPad, which I’d have to change from iPad 2 to iPad 3. Sure, that would mean I’d repeat a few errors, most fairly minor, but I’d still end up way ahead of the typical pundit. If I cheated and skipped the ones where I fell short, there’s an excellent chance I’d get a perfect score at Year’s end. It’s a depressing thought, but probably true, that with the exception of the added inanity of an election year, things will probably pretty much repeat themselves.  The Republicans will obstruct, Obama will give in and declare victory, and the economic near Depression will continue, despite the fact that our problems could be rectified fairly easily and painlessly. Only a David Brooks could miss any of that. Am I right?  
    
 Of course, the year will be leavened by bizarre events, of which, much like some events of this year it can truly be said, no one could have predicted. In this category we must put events like the rise and fall of Herman Cain, an event far more bizarre than the just reported repeat of the New Year’s blackbird die-off in Arkansas.  Somewhere waiting in the wings is the Herman Cain of 2012. No doubt there is someone loonier than Herman all set to run for the Senate. There’s so many in the House that no one bothers to count.
    
 So these are some reflections, as well as some intermixed predictions about the coming horror show. Yes Virginia, against all odds, 2012 will be more insane than 2011. 
 
First, I’m not saying a thing about Connecticut.  I’ve learned my lesson after my disastrous prediction last year. Malloy and Company will have to take care of themselves.
 
So, on to the Nationals.
 
Very little happens in most election years, at least so far as domestic legislation is concerned, and that should be true in 2012 in spades, given the Republican intransigence of the past three years. So lets look ahead and see if there’s a snowball’s chance that we can pull this country out of its nosedive by electing a rational and responsive government in 2012. (Hint: we can’t)
 
Of one thing we can be sure, absent a miracle. No one wants it, but Willard 1% Romney will be the Republican candidate for president. The only question is where he will find delegates he can trust not to stampede to the first Great White Hope (and I do mean white- sorry Herman) someone proposes before the first ballot, in the vain hope that they can stave off the inevitable. He’ll find such delegates, no doubt, though like Linda McMahon he may have to pay for them. Now, a prognosticator could really prove his or her mettle by predicting the VP candidate. I think he’ll be looking for a person with brown skin, not to attract the votes of such people, but for PR purposes and to assure the party of racists that they are, in fact, not racists. Brown Republicans are not exactly thick on the ground, so I’m thinking Marco Rubio or Bobby Jindal. But my level of confidence on this is not great. Maybe he’ll go for a Palin clone. The Republican party is chock a block with them, so I wouldn’t even try to choose among them.
 

One thing about the election is hard to predict: whether there will be a third party candidate. If, as everyone suspects, the Republicans swallow their medicine and nominate Romney, there will be a lot of unhappy ideologues. It’s certainly possible that someone like Ron Paul would take the plunge. There’s also a “centrist” group out there called Americans Elect, a rather shadowy organization with announced policies almost identical to the positions Obama has taken. Their actual agenda is somewhat unclear-they won’t disclose their financial backers. Since they are presumably smart enough to know what Obama has actually been doing, and since the money appears to be coming from Wall Street types, the point is probably to siphon votes from Obama to give the presidency to a Republican. I don’t think that works, particularly with Romney as the Republican candidate. My own feeling is that any third party candidate, other than a Nader type (none on the horizon ) helps Obama. But this is about predictions, so here goes. I’m wishing and hoping, and therefore predicting, that Ron Paul will take this opportunity to further fleece the ignorant dupes that are ponying up all that money. Should that happen, and were I Obama, I’d insist that he be at the debates.

 

The biggest question about the election: whose side is more discouraged. My own prediction is that it will be the nut balls on the Republican side, who, besides despising the Doctor Fell getting their nomination, might very well have a third party to consider. Our side will be so scared of the alternative that we’ll come out for Obama in sufficient numbers to get him over the top. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. I’m disappointed with the guy, but at least he’s not a psychopath, sociopath, or robot.
 
Turning to other elections, I think the Democrats will gain seats in the House, but as they will speak with many voices, and will waste much time trying to be all things to all people, and will be loathe to upset the beltway pundits by being “partisan” or “engaging in class warfare” (translation: resisting the oligarchs) they will not be able to capitalize on the widespread loathing of this Congress. 

 
I.e., the Republicans keep control of the House.
 
Alas, unless they nominate a slew of Christine O’Donnells (and there is always hope), the Republicans take control of the Senate. Though I am technically getting into 2013 here, I will repeat what I’ve said before. If they do manage to take the presidency, they’ll abolish or cripple the filibuster. If, by some miracle, the Democrats retain the Senate and take the House, they will not even think of changing such a hallowed institution, which served the country so well in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.
 
Since we’re talking about the Senate, let us turn our attention to our own fair state. For every silver lining, no matter how thick, and no matter how silver, there’s a cloud. We here are being blessed with tons of silver. Joe Lieberman will no longer be the Senator from Connecticut. This we know, and this might be evidence for the existence of God, were it not for the fact that the same God would have been responsible for inflicting him in the first place, and no all wise, all powerful, and all loving entity would do such a thing to his miserable creatures. But, as I say, there is a cloud on the horizon. Look for Joe to take his place on Fox as their go-to token Democrat. This may not happen on 2012, given that he won’t, unfortunately, be out of office until 2013, so I’m right if it happens anytime before June, 2013.
 
Another silver lining, with not much of a cloud: I think Elizabeth Warren will win in Massachusetts, no matter how much Wall Street money is thrown at her.
 
One big story from last year, that no one predicted, was the Occupy movement. It’s not so much that no one could have predicted demonstrations, it’s that no one could have predicted that anyone would pay attention. For this we have cops and pepper spray to thank. It’s a strange world.
 
So, whither Occupy? Will they turn out and vote, or has Obama turned them off to electoral politics. It may be one of his most bitter legacies that having raised the hopes of a generation, and then dashing them so effectively, he may have convinced them that change through the electoral process is impossible. Here’s hoping that’s not so, and here’s also hoping that they’ll think of more creative ways of getting their message before the people and into the national conversation. It doesn’t matter whether people “approve” of them or not. Public opinion is far more complex than we are led to believe. Not that many “approved” of the tea party, but they won big by forcefully pushing while no one pushed back. If the occupy folks can keep income inequality in the forefront, some good things might happen.Then again, the media might get itself under better control and relegate them to the limbo into which all left wing movements are consigned.
 
Turning now to the economy, both world and national, once again we see more of the same.
 
As incredible as it may seem, Europe has been even stupider than us in its response to the economic crisis there, though they have at least a fig leaf of an excuse because no one has dealt with a trans-national currency like the Euro before. 
 
Here at home, we will do nothing to deal with the current crisis or to prevent its recurrence.
 
Obama has come to the conclusion that nothing will happen, which means he is perhaps cured of his bi-partisan delusion. Better late than never, but had he never succumbed to this beltway disease, he may very well have accomplished some things in his first two years in office that might have forestalled or minimized the Republican tsunami in 2010. Unfortunately, this Democratic disease of timidity is the factor that results in the ever rightward drift of our politics. Democrats get thrown out of office for not doing what they promised. Republicans get thrown out for doing what they promised.   
 
Unlike during the depression, no really effective action was taken this time around to prevent a repetition of the events that led to the current economic decline. The recent uprisings against the Bank of America’s $5.00 debit card fee and Verizon’s 2.00 bill paying charge certainly show that the American people are ready for some fundamental changes. A few short years ago those charges would have gone virtually unnoticed. The Republicans, of course, will do nothing, and the Democrats will follow suit, despite the PR value that just advocating change would yield. Why jeopardize that cushy lobbying job should you lose reelection by displeasing the corporate puppet masters?
 
 Bankers will continue to make outsize salaries, whether the banks make money or not. Meanwhile they will continue to moan about how poorly treated and misunderstood they are. It’s not easy having lots of green.
 
Now that we’ve dealt with politics and economics, lets turn to minor issues, like the continued survival of the human species and other miscellany.
 
It’s been warm lately, but what of that. At some point we will have a snowstorm or a very cold day, and the folks at Fox will make jokes about Al Gore. Other than that we will hear nothing about the environment. The Obama people may do something worthwhile under the radar through regulation, but not anything major.
 
Turning to other matters.
 
The iPad 3 will be almost indistinguishable from the present one. It will have Siri, which would easily work on the present iPad, but Apple won’t allow that because they want a feature or two to induce Apple zombies to upgrade. Where do I get in line? Right behind Lon, I believe.
 
Someone will win the Oscars.
 
Some famous people will die and some Hollywood people will misbehave.
 
The Red Sox are back! Once again the folks in Boston have fashioned a team almost guaranteed to break our hearts. It’s what we’re used to, and, as we all know, it’s what we truly missed during those freakish years starting in 2004.
 
So, of some things we can be sure. As to the messy and bizarre little details, we will have to await events. Of this we can be certain. The decline continues; not to be abated in this electoral cycle, absent a truly extraordinary miracle. The world gets warmer, the people get poorer, and the barbarians are at the gates, in the form of an unholy alliance of the plutocrats and the theocrats. I’ll leave the rest to Randy:  
    
  The end of an empire is messy at best  
  And this empire is ending  
  Like all the rest  
  Like the Spanish Armada adrift on the sea  
  We’re adrift in the land of the brave  
  And the home of the free

 

No, wait. I can’t leave it there. I’m under strict orders from a certain someone not to be a cranky old man. So forget about what Randy has to say, and forget about all my dire premonitions. Take a bit of the advice from Monty Python that I’ve repeated so often:

Some things in life are bad 
They can really make you mad 
Other things just make you swear and curse. 
When you’re chewing on life’s gristle 
Don’t grumble, give a whistle 
And this’ll help things turn out for the best…

And…always look on the bright side of life…  
Always look on the light side of life…

Filed in Ramblings | | Comments (0)

God starts the New Year

Monday, January 2, 2012

The Catholic Church, always looking out for the main chance, is recruiting bigoted Episcopalians to swell the ranks of the priesthood. 
 
Meanwhile in Israel the Orthodox Jews are proving they have something in common with the Catholics here and Muslims almost anywhere. Like the Catholics here they believe that their religious freedoms are infringed if the state doesn’t step in and impose their beliefs on everyone else. Like the Muslims most of what they want to impose involves the subjugation of women. 
 
Postscript: I must say this in defense of the Catholic Church. True, it is currently mired in the 14th century, but Catholics are not, as the linked article states, “expected to pray to the pope”. Who know, however, what the future may hold. 

Filed in Hypocrisy, Religion | | Comments (0)

Friday Night Music, New Year’s Edition

Friday, December 30, 2011

Seeing that the New Year is coming, it’s only right that this week’s pick be somewhat appropriate. Other than Auld Lang Syne, which I would post only if tortured, no obvious candidates come immediately to mind. There are no New Year carols, after all. But choose I must.

One must first determine, then, whether one should pick something that reflects on the year that’s passed, or the year to come, and must then determine whether to pick music with an optimistic or realistic pessimistic outlook. As to the former, I shall look forward to the coming year, fraught as it is with possibilities. As to the latter, I’ve decided to do a bit of both, but lightly on the realism, because a certain person with whom I live has put me on notice that I am becoming a cranky old man.

Many years ago, in fact it was our very first New Year’s eve together, my wife and I, along with one (or more, my memory’s hazy) of our roommates, chanced to put on a recording of Beethoven’s Ninth. Perhaps the substances we were inhaling had something to do with it, but no piece of music before or since has ever filled me with such…well, joy. In my own opinion it beats Strauss hands down as an appropriate piece of music for the day. This video is especially good, and really, how can you ever give up hope completely if you belong to a species even one of whose members can create something so beautiful. So here’s hoping that against all odds, 2012 will see some small measure of progress.

But as I hinted above, one can’t be too optimistic, and, when I think about the coming year it does make me want to cry for help. Which brings us to the second part of this feature, which was suggested to me, oddly enough, by this very silly clip, which appeared on the results of my search for Beethoven’s Ninth.

Anyway, here they are, speaking for all of us as we face a year that, speaking realistically, looks to be even worse than the last.

Filed in Music | | Comments (0)

Republicans outsourcing the slime

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

We in Connecticut will likely not experience this first hand, except to the extent there’s some spillover from the Senate race in Massachusetts, but it looks like a pattern is developing in Iowa. The big money guys with the Superpacs are taking care of the negative ads, while the beneficiaries of those ads, mostly Willard (1%) Romney, can appear to be above the fray, needing to say they approve of only the positive stuff their own campaigns put out. It’s a sort of non-coordinated coordination. The Balloon Juice blogger at the link suggests that over time this might result in different fund raising patterns for the two parties. 
   

I don’t know how much Citizens United has helped cause the rise of the SuperPac, but this seems to represent a new direction in politics, and perhaps one that will allow Republican elites to maintain some control of the party. Outsiders with strong grassroots support, like Ron Paul can raise a lot of money from small donors and still get blown away in the money race by big institutional donations to SuperPacs.

This also de-incentives Republican efforts to expand their small donor base in general elections. It will be interesting if, in 5 or 10 years, Democrats dominate the small donor direct-to-campaign (and party committee) game while Republicans rely mostly on big donors. Things are already headed in that direction.

 
There may be some truth in this, and while it would appear to be the case that it will leave the Democrats at a disadvantage, there may be a silver lining. The disadvantage is obvious. In the general elections those SuperPacs will swivel to attacking Democrats, and there won’t be a commensurate response from our side. On the other hand, if Democrats are beholden to small donors, they may actually start advocating for progressive policies, since that will be where the money is. There is a limit to what money can do. In Iowa it is sinking Newt, but then, that was only a matter of time. No amount of money appears sufficient to make Mr. 1% a popular guy, however and, call me an optimist, but I don’t think money will be able to take down Elizabeth Warren. Moreover, many voters, particularly the young, are getting their information from the Internet. Rather than being passive receptacles of ceaselessly bombarded propaganda, they seek out their own information sources, so perhaps-at least we can hope-the mass media dominance of the corporations will have less impact. Of course, the corporations are intent on getting control of the net, and, with the help of politicians of all stripes, they may do so, in which case this whisper of a hope may vanish. 

Filed in Corporate Crime | | Comments (1)

Who’s on this A team you speak of?

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Steve Benen reports that Bill Kristol is still casting about for late entries into the Presidential sweepstakes, and apparently Kristol’s not the only one:  

This comes, by the way, a day after National Review’s Rich Lowry ran a piece quoting “a pretty prominent conservative officeholder,” who conceded that when it comes to the Republican Party and the 2012 presidential candidate, “[W]e don’t have our A team on the field.” 

 
Which leads those of us out here in the hinterlands wondering: Precisely who is on that A team? This is a party, afte all, that has looked to people like Fred Thompson, and only recently, Rick Perry and Chris Christie as potential Messiahs. Christie may still be on the list, but only because he has declined to join the fray. A litte sunlight, and all these princes (and princesses) turn to frogs. I’m a partisan guy, no doubt, but I can recall a day when there were Republicans out there that I could imagine as president without simultaneously giving up hope for the republican (small “r”, there-an important distinction) experiment so bravely lauched by our sainted forefathers. Such people no longer exist. In twelve short years we have come from a point where we had to fear the presidency of a moron like George Bush to the point where a George Bush clone would look good by comparison with our other choices, and remember, by 2000 the choices were so bad that the media felt it necessary to try to turn John McCain into a man of principle. At such a time as this it was perhaps inevitable that only a chameleon like Romney could stand a chance to win as a Republican. 
 
Bill Kristol bears more than a little responsibility for this state of affairs. It was he, to cite just one example, that first proposed Sarah Paln for the vice presidency. In typical fashion, he has never admitted how wrong he was, except implicitly by rejecting the current crop, few of whom are any worse than Sarah. The right may have marginalized the Republican party as a national presidential party. It can still win Congressional elections, of course, and given the Democrat’s startling ability to lose big in census years, it has the advantage of drawn to order districts. But so far as presidential elections go, where it’s fairly hard to hide the crazy, only Democratic incompetence or electoral fraud can save it. Unfortunately for the country neither of those commodities is in short supply.  

 
 

Filed in Republicans | | Comments (0)

Report card

Monday, December 26, 2011

If one aspires to be a pundit, one should, in my own humble opinion, be prepared to be judged. Unlike David Brooks or Tom Friedman, I feel it my duty to revisit my prognostications, to see how they hold up in the light of reality. Last year, I made some predictions about the coming year, and, as I said I would, I now revisit them to grade myself on my performance. 
 
If you check out the piece to which I’ve linked, you’ll see that I wrote both optimistic and pessimistic predictions. The optimistic predictions were mere mirror images of the pessimistic, and anyone (save, perhaps one of the myriads who actually think Stephen Colbert is a conservative) can see that I should be judged by the pessimistic predictions.
 
I am, for the most part, adopting a two part scoring system here. Letter grades, like they hand out in school, and degree of difficulty (like they use in diving competitions, on a scale of one to ten). The former is an indicator of my performance on the prediction; the latter the difficulty of making the prediction itself. So here, goes.
 
First prediction:
 

1. The Connecticut legislature will suddenly discover that it has the ability to buck the governor, and will do so whenever Malloy wants to do anything that is in the long term best interests of the state.

 
 
I must hang my head in shame on this one. I must give myself a D. DOD: Indeterminate. Some might argue for an F, but in my defense I first quote the very next line in that long ago post:
 

Okay, that’s it. My interest in state politics, never very high, has now waned. Now, on to the nation at large.

 
I also decline to give myself a failing grade because for all I know there is some truth in my prediction, but  only someone far better informed than I could say for sure. Finally, this is my blog; I’m handing out the marks; and I decline on principle to give myself an F, at least this early on. However, I generously leave it to the reader to assign his or her own grade.
 
Now, on to the national predictions:
 

1. The United States Senate will make a gesture toward reforming its rules, but will do nothing meaningful. To the extent anything meaningful is proposed, it will be defeated in response to cries of unfairness from the same Republicans, including the Fox News people, who condemned filibusters when Democrats threatened to use them (and didn’t because they were intimidated).

 
A plus on this one. DOD:1. By the way, I decline to do the work involved in finding links to justify my marks. It’s the day after Christmas, and I am feeling lazy. Suffice it to say that the Democratic attempt to reform the rules was such an empty gesture that there was never any need for Fox to engage in hypocritical hyperbole. 
 
Next up:
 

2. Republicans will make unreasonable demands in exchange for increasing the debt limit, most likely cuts in programs such as Medicaid. Unlike Clinton, Obama will be unable or unwilling to make the Republicans look like petty obstructionists bent on damaging the middle class. The Republicans will get what they want, with a fig leaf for Obama, who will proclaim that the deal was great for the country, thus undercutting any Democrat who comes out against it. Obama will earn beltway credibility for “bi-partisanship”. The deal will contain the seeds of yet another such “crisis”. Pundits on the left will therefore warn that we are being set up for another betrayal, but they will be ignored.

 
A. DOD:0. Why, you might ask, do I deny myself an A plus? Because it’s just possible that Obama offered the cuts in social programs before the Republicans could get around to demanding them. A bit of internet research would likely answer the question, and I might be able to add the plus, but really truly, I am a lazy guy, and I’ll settle for the gentleman’s A. It doesn’t matter anyway, since the degree of difficulty on this one is so low that the extra plus would yield no additional credit to my account.
 
Next:
 

3. Obama will propose cuts to social security. In this context, the term “cut” includes, but is not necessarily limited to, direct cuts in present benefits, raising the retirement age, or changing the way benefit amounts are determined so that, over time, the real value of benefits declines. Republicans will go along with his suggestions, and then successfully accuse Democrats of trying to destroy Social Security. Economists who know what they are talking about will point out that there is no economic need to cut Social Security, and that lifting the payroll tax limit, a relatively painless step, would assure benefits far into the future (assuming, of course, that we avoid economic or environmental collapse). These economists will be ignored, due to the fact that they have been right about economic issues in the past, thus disqualifying them from any participation in the national discourse.

 
B plus. DOD:3. The degree of difficulty is higher on this one because most people, looking forward at the time, would have refused to believe that a Democrat, especially in this political environment, would throw away votes by needlessly sacrificing social security; a program that does not add to the deficit, is extremely cost effective; very popular, and vital to millions of Americans. I didn’t earn an A because I failed to remember that the Republicans always refuse to agree with anything Obama suggests, which in this case was a good thing. Time will tell whether they’ll get around to  accusing the Democrats of trying to destroy Social Security, so on that particular part of the prediction, the jury is still out. By the way, I don’t lose points because Obama was making the offer in response to the debt ceiling fiasco, which was covered by prediction two. Fact is, he offered to cut Social Security, so I win.
 

4. Republicans will demand cuts in all manner of public programs (over and above those they extort in exchange for increasing the debt limit). They will do so on the grounds that the deficit is out of control. Many Democrats will join the chorus. No one within the Beltway will note that the programs being attacked involve sums that are insignificant in comparison to the amount given to the rich by way of the tax cuts the Republicans extorted in 2010.

 
A plus. DOD: 0
 

5. The media will continue to portray the Republican party as the party of fiscal responsibility.

 
A plus. DOD: 0
 

6. We will continue mired in Afghanistan. The Republicans will hold war funding hostage to some horrible demand. No one will accuse them of not supporting the troops, and they will continue to be acknowledged to be the stronger party when it comes to foreign policy and “fighting terrorism”, the massive evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. By the way, they will get whatever they are demanding.

 
D. DOD 2. We are mired in Afghanistan,so I was right on that. I actually seem to recall that some Republicans did object to war funding, but on this one I did hit the google, and I admit defeat. On most other particulars of this prediction, I was blessedly wrong.
 

7. Congress will do nothing about global warming. In fact, the entire country will continue to pretend that nothing is happening, even while we suffer through one of the hottest summers on record.

 
A plus. DOD: 0
 

8. China will open up an even bigger lead in green technology.

 
A plus. DOD: 1
 

9. Unemployment will remain high. Republicans will blame Obama, while continuing to prevent him from doing anything about it.

 
A plus. DOD 1. Okay, the DOD is a gift to myself, but it’s Christmas time, after all.
 
Next was a bonus prediction, born out of sadistic hope to see Joe Lieberman crushed at the polls:
 

Okay, I’ll go out on a limb. This is one I’m not totally sure about:
 
Joe Liberman will announce he will run as an Independent, finally giving us liberals something to smile about. National Democrats will come to terms with the fact that one good vote is not enough to restore Liberman to favor and that the people of Connecticut are ready to kick him out of the club, and that they don’t really care what the Beltway crowd thinks.

 
F on this one. DOD 4. Okay, I never really believed it, but I so wanted it to happen.
 
So that’s it on the political front. No doubt anyone who has made it this far has noticed that the degrees of difficulty on these predictions were quite low, and that anyone of reasonable intelligence could have done as well. But I ask that you judge me not against the reasonable man standard, but against that of the Beltway pundit, and by that standard, I am a shining star. Consider prediction 2, for instance, a no brainer except Barack Obama, Harry Reid, and the entire Beltway punditry allegedly never saw it coming. Recall that Obama said after the disastrous tax deal of late 2010, when he neither demanded nor got a commitment on the debt ceiling, that he was sure the Republicans would be reasonable on the issue. 
 
I made some other predictions on non-political issues, to which we must also return.
 

1. The Ipad will be updated, and I will find a reason why I absolutely need one, but Lon Seidman will get one first.

 
A plus. Degree of difficulty 0. Actually I’m not absolutely positive Lon got one before me, but I have such faith in him that I am going to award myself this score without checking. Actually, maybe I should reduce this grade, because I never really did come up with a reason, good or otherwise, to get one; but I got one anyway.
 

2. Lindsey Lohan, whoever she may be, will continue to self destruct, but people will cease to care, as some other celebrity will blaze new trails of tabloid documented self destruction.

 
Ungraded. I still don’t know who she is, and I have no idea whether she continued her self destructive behavior or whether someone took her place, though Charlie Sheen’s name pops to mind.
 

3. I will work my way through all of this century’s episodes of Dr. Who.

 
A plus. DOD: minus 10. This year’s Christmas special should be on Itunes any day now.
 

4. The entire world will continue to marvel at how much all of our lives have changed now that you can download Beatles songs from Itunes.

 
Okay, totally wrong, but I never meant it anyway.
 

5. The Red Sox will have a good year. And in the end, isn’t any year a good year in which Red Sox fans can chant “Yankees Suck” with full throated enthusiasm and some measure of truth?

 
F. DOD: 7. I have nothing to say in my defense on this one, except I take some small measure of solace in the fact that the late season swoon restored a certain amount of balance to the universe.
 
To conclude, on the political front, I’ll give myself a B plus average, as I’m throwing out the Lieberman prediction since I never really meant it. Not too bad. I’d be happy to compare my record with Friedman or Brooks any day, though I realize that’s setting the bar pretty low.
 
One more thing: A New Year is dawning, so we must try to look on the bright side of life.  While the stuff I did predict is for the most part depressing, there were several things I (and I’m not alone on this) failed to predict that must give us all hope. The Arab world overthrew several dictators, and while it’s still too early to tell if they’ll end up with functioning democracies, there is at least hope. Here at home the kids took to the streets, and have changed the conversation, hopefully permanently, about what’s happening in this country. The tide may have started to turn against the oligarchs. 
 
On or before the first I’ll have a new set of predictions, so check back about a year from now to see how I fare.

Filed in Ramblings | | Comments (1)

Europe Follows our lead

Thursday, December 22, 2011

Floyd Norris, who usually, so far as I can see, makes sense, notes with approval that the European Central Bank has found a way to delay the day of reckoning in Europe:

In recent weeks, the new president publicly insisted the central bank would never do any of the things that Germany opposed. The bank would not drastically step up its purchases of Spanish and Italian government bonds. It would not directly finance European governments. It would not backstop European rescue funds or print money that the International Monetary Fund could use to bail out governments. 
 
It would do only what central banks normally do. It would lend to banks. 
 
It turns out that may be enough to stem the European crisis for at least a few years, and go a long way to recapitalizing banks in the process. 
 
That fact only became clear on Wednesday, although Mr. Draghi announced his intentions on Dec. 8, when the central bank said it would offer to lend money to banks for three-year terms, in unlimited amounts, at a very low rate. 
 
In reality, it was an offer banks could not refuse. They will initially pay the central bank’s official rate of 1 percent. But if the bank lowers the rate in coming months — as it is widely expected to do — the rate on these loans will drop as well. 
 
There is no limit on what the banks can do with the money. But there is an obvious, virtually risk-free, option. A bank can buy short-term securities of its own government and pocket the difference — up to four or five percentage points — for the life of the securities.

If there is an obvious way to use the money, then it is, we can assume, the ECB’s intent that the money should be used in precisely that way. This is, then, a backdoor way to do what it refuses to do directly: “step up its purchases of Spanish and Italian government bonds” or “backstop European rescue funds or print money that the International Monetary Fund could use to bail out governments”.
 
I’m no expert, but this inquiring mind wants to know why it makes any sense at all to do indirectly and inefficiently what could and should be done directly. The European banks are getting a deal pretty much like the banks here got: the government is lending them money at almost no interest, and borrowing it back at a higher rate. One might argue that in this case the banks are taking on risk the American banks never did; after all, when the American banks lent the money back to the government there was no risk of an American default.
 
But in reality, it is the ECB that is really taking on the risk here, and its doing it for a measly one percent return. As here, everyone knows that if push comes to shove, the ECB will step in to bail out the banks, since this “plan” is itself part of just such a bailout. So, as here, the banks are lending out money with no real risk, and pocketing the spread between their own costs and those they are passing on to the taxpayers of Europe. In essence, those taxpayers are paying a tax to the banks, and a hefty one at that. Along with getting the bill, those very taxpayers will be expected to make “sacrifices”, in the form of counterproductive austerity measures. The banks and bankers, of course, will make no sacrifices. They will get only what they’ve grown used to getting: free money. It’s a Wonderful Life if you’re a banker.
 
As a postscript, as even Norris acknowledges, all this maneuvering only postpones the inevitable, since it does not address the fundamental problems with the Euro. Dean Baker explains the situation succinctly:

It seems the problem here is that Robert Samuelson has not heard about the euro. The countries he has identified as reaching a situation where they “lose control over their economy” are all on the euro. These are countries that do not issue their own currency. In this sense they are like Ohio and Texas. These states cannot freely run deficits because the Federal Reserve Board has no explicit or implicit commitment to back up their debt. Greece, Italy and Spain are in the same situation, as the European Central Bank (ECB) has repeatedly insisted that it will not back up the government debt they issue.

The countries of Europe have tried to have it both ways: a unified currency without a truly unified economy. It hasn’t worked. The ECB’s response doesn’t address the underlying issue, but it does make an awful lot of rich bankers a lot richer.
 
UPDATE: Paul Krugman confirms my basic reaction that this was a back door way to lend money to Italy, Spain etc.
 

Regular readers may recall that I and others were adamant that it was essential for the ECB to step in and buy the debt of troubled governments, to head off what looked very much like self-fulfilling panic. The ECB refused to do that, and many of us took that refusal at face value — but the argument is that in reality it did the functional equivalent, lending very large sums to banks with sovereign debt as collateral, so that it was in effect doing the purchases we wanted, but laundering those purchases through banks.

 

Filed in Corporate Crime, Economics | | Comments (0)

The “Lie of the Year” is perfectly true

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

This could only happen in America: an organization supposedly dedicated to rooting out deception takes the position that semantics trumps reality. According to Politifact, so long as the Republicans call something Medicare the claim that they intend to end what we now know as Medicare is not only untrue, it is, among all the remarkable lies we’ve seen this year, the lie of the year. Paul Krugman tells the tale:

 

This is really awful. Politifact, which is supposed to police false claims in politics, has announced its Lie of the Year — and it’s a statement that happens to be true, the claim that Republicans have voted to end Medicare.

Steve Benen in the link above explains it, but let me just repeat the basics. Republicans voted to replace Medicare with a voucher system to buy private insurance — and not just that, a voucher system in which the value of the vouchers would systematically lag the cost of health care, so that there was no guarantee that seniors would even be able to afford private insurance.

The new scheme would still be called “Medicare”, but it would bear little resemblance to the current system, which guarantees essential care to all seniors.

How is this not an end to Medicare? And given all the actual, indisputable lies out there, how on earth could saying that it is be the “Lie of the year”?

One suspects that even Orwell would be surprised at this one. Krugman feels this is a question of Politifact wanting to appear to be balanced. I think the folks at Politifact got snookered by the Republican spin machine, and, when called on it, as they were months ago, they decided to dig in rather than admit their mistake. There probably is a bit of attempted balance going on. Had the wronged party been the Republicans, Politifact probably would have come clean. 

Filed in Media | | Comments (0)

One of our own hits the big(ger) time

Saturday, December 17, 2011

Congratulations to Noank’s own Karen Buffkin: 

Karen Buffkin of Noank has been appointed deputy secretary of the state Office of Policy and Management, replacing Mark Ojakian, who has been named chief of staff by Governor Dannel P. Malloy.

Buffkin had served as Undersecretary for Legal Affairs for OPM.

“I’m thrilled to be able to make this appointment,” OPM Secretary Ben Barnes said in a release. “I had not known Karen well when she began here a year ago, but everyone who has worked with her has been impressed by her work ethic, knowledge and administrative abilities. Her broad experience in government and as a litigator is invaluable for the type of work we do at OPM. Maybe best of all, she is a great team player and her colleagues at OPM are enthusiastic about her new position.”

For those not familiar with this area, Noank (along with parts of Mystic, Groton Long Point and the City of Groton) is part of the Town of Groton. I decline to explain further, as I have only lived here for 35 years and so have not yet had time to gain an understanding of the reasons why such inefficiency is desirable, but all the natives assure me that it is. Getting back to Karen, while her new job is certainly both impressive and well deserved, she already holds the far more prestigious position of vice-chair of the Groton Democratic Town Committee, which the Day inexplicably omitted from the linked article. 

Filed in Local issues | | Comments (0)